END OF THE ROAD
Stricken with a rare disease, Peter Frampton may have played his final tour. Do you feel like we do?
When I caught up with the legendary Peter Frampton in September 2019, it was at a sold-out show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden—a venue he hadn’t headlined since 1977. He was in amazing form, boosted no doubt by a raucous response from the crowd, who demanded several lengthy encores. After a long and heartfelt goodbye from the stage, Frampton was gone and countless tears filled the legendary cavernous space, no doubt due to the news that he may not play that space, or any other in the U.S., ever again. “There’ll come a time, probably pretty soon, when I won’t be able to play, at least not at the level that I demand of myself,” Frampton told me at the time, almost matter-of-factly and certainly without a hint of self-pity.
During the 1970s, Peter Frampton graced the pages of CREEM countless times. The band that introduced him to America, Humble Pie, not to mention his solo albums Wind of Change, Frampton's Camel, Somethin’s Happening, and Frampton, made him the darling of the rock cognoscenti. In 1976, his live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, brought him global superstardom.